India’s one of the greatest players made his debut on this day in 2011
Virat Kohli (Image Source: Twitter)
Virat Kohli is known as the most decorated batter of India in the last decade as he won millions of hearts with his batting abilities. Apart from being an individual player, he showed his leadership qualities also across all the formats of the game for India. 20 June 2011 was the day when this right-handed batter from Delhi made his Test debut against West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.
The first outing was not as good as he would have liked it as he got dismissed four runs in the first innings. In the second innings, he managed only 15 runs. However, till now he scored 8043 runs in 101 matches (171 innings) at an average of 49.95. He scored 27 hundred along with 28 fifty-plus scores. He scored seven double centuries so far in his career as his career-best score is 254* against South Africa at Pune.
Virat Kohli is the First Asian captain to win a Test series in Australia
Virat scored his first Test ton in Australia during the Border-Gavaskar trophy 2011/12. In 2014, he had given the opportunity to lead India after MS Dhoni’s era as Test captain. During his tenure as the captain of the Test side until 2022, he lead India in 68 matches and won 40 matches out of them with a winning percentage of 58.82%. He only lost 17 matches while 11 matches were drawn only.
On this day in 2011 – Virat Kohli made his Test debut, changed the history of Indian Test cricket as a captain with 40 wins, memorable comeback with the bat in England, first Asian captain to win a Test series in Australia – 11 years has been fantastic, has given flavor to Tests. pic.twitter.com/xTmxorCrep
— Johns. (@CricCrazyJohns) June 20, 2022
In his time, he emphasized on pace bowling attack of India, and thus, India has ow become a dangerous side with a lethal pace bowling group with the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami, Mohammad Siraj, and others. Under his leadership, India managed to win matches and series overseas also as India was crowned the number one Test team in the Rankings for a continuous period of 42 months from October 2016 till early March 2020.
As a batter, he had some downfall also as he failed to score a single ton in England in 2014. But, four years later, in 2018 he scored 593 runs in five matches of the England series and buried the nightmare of 2014 completely. He was also the first Asian captain to win a Test series on Australian soil by a margin of 2-1 on January 7, 2019.
After all these 11 years, Virat Kohli only took the Indian Test cricket team’s graph upward. In recent times, he had not been in his prime as he failed to score a hundred since 2019. However, he will be eager to make a strong comeback in the upcoming rescheduled Test match in England, starting from 1 July 2022.
